LATIN DICTIONARYLexicon Latīnum
Allen & Greenough · Part First — Words and Forms › Signification of the Forms of the Verb

§161. Tenses of the Finite Verb

The Perfect Indicative has two separate uses,—the Perfect Definite and the Perfect Historical (or Indefinite).

  • The Perfect Definite represents the action of the verb as completed in present time, and corresponds to the English perfect with have: as, scrīpsī, I have written.
  • The Perfect Historical narrates a simple act or state in past time without representing it as in progress or continuing. It corresponds to the English past or preterite and the Greek aorist: as, scrīpsit, he wrote.

J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough, New Latin Grammar (Boston: Ginn, 1903). Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.